Quote:
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Originally Posted by joosrsx
Did you get to do any wild weasel missions? If so I speak for everyone here, we want a story 
Some stuff you just never get tired of hearing about |
Hi,
In the NAVY they're called
IronHand, not Wild Weasel. And, yes, I flew several Ironhand sorties in advance of Alpha Strikes coming out of Korat Royal Thai Airbase (BUFFs - B-52s). In some way, these were my favorite ops because we were literally saving the Bomber guys' skins
I did two tours on Station
Yankee, 300 miles off of Haiphong Harbor in the So. China Sea (during the entire VN conflict, there was always 1 Carrier Battle Group on station there for 4 mos., until it was relieved by the next).
We flew every day, weather permitting, and flew a variety of missions -
ResCap (Rescue Combat Air Patrol - High cover for Big Mother (Navy equivalent of the Jolly Green Giant),
BarCap (Barrier Combat Air Patrol - the carrier maintains a perimeter defense 125 mi. from the ship) - go on station and fly lazy 8's with the Radar looking out another 125 mi. 6 Hr. Missions, when you got low on
Dino Juice, you would rendezvous with an A6 Buddy Tanker and do a
Bridge (refueling) and go back on station - boring, but good for the Log Book.
MigCap (Fly cover for various aircraft performing ordinance delivery - B-52's, A6's, A8's, F-104's) and keep em safe from Bad Guys. And
IronHand - SAM Interdiction.
The IronHand hops were the most interesting. Naval Intelligence determined that it took 30 min. to load and fuel an SA II (SAM). If we could fly in 15 min. ahead of the Strike Force and fool the
Gomers into firing at us, when the Strike Pkg. came over 15-20 min. later, all Charlie could do was shake his fist at them.
We flew Bomber formations and altitudes and used their radio speak and frequencies. My GIB -
Guy in Back - technically the
RIO (Radar Intercept Officer) was listening for their Radars. The Missile Control site's radar had a distinctive tone or growl in Search Mode which would increase in pitch and frequency when you were targeted, when the SAM launched, the tone changed to a higher pitch.
We had a Black Box (RWR - Radar Warning Receiver) which was supposed to tell us the direction the SAM was coming and which direction to take to avoid it. But, the computing power of the thing was less than a modern calculator, so it had a 3-5 sec. lag from real time - it didn't work. You had to visually acquire the SAMs to evade safely.
So, whenever the radar went into Launch Mode, I'd take the port side and my GIB the starboard side to try and find the thing. The SAM mirrors your movements, and looks like a point of light sprialling out of the jungle. Once either of us acquired the missile, we'd call it out - "
SAM at 4 o'clock", or whatever.
At this point, I'd have to go back to flying the airplane and maneuver into the SAM keeping it at either 10 o'clock or 2 o'clock, full MIL Power. At about 1000 meters (4000mph closing rate), you'd roll and pitch away from the missile - about a 6g maneuver.
The missile couldn't turn with us, so would overshoot. It had only a forward looking radar, so it would lose Lock and eventually exhaust it's fuel supply and fall back into the jungle and go Boom. In fact, many of the reports from the VC that US planes had bombed a village were really their own SAMs falling back on top of them.
But, they often launched multiple missiles at you and this is where it got interesting. The first one was usually easy to evade, but you had to stay out of the radar envelope of the others. We had Chaff dispensers and these helped. But, the worst were those fired from your 6 o'clock because they were traveling at Mach 3 and you didn't have time to turn into them. In this case, you'd dive for the deck and hope that the ground clutter would confuse the missile's radar, which it usually did - always in my case.
Our
worst day at the office came when we had 4 SAMs fired at us nearly simultaneously. Our Intel Briefing that day alerted us that the Soviets has started to arm the SAMs with proximity fuses - fuses which would detonate the warhead if it got within a certain distance of you, in the hopes that some shrapnel would take you out. But, they said, not to worry, because they hadn't been fielded yet. Anyway, we evaded the 1st one and just as we were rolling off of the 2nd one, the proximity fuse in the 3rd detonated and really messed up the Tail Surfaces of the airplane. I still had the turbines spinning and had most of the control of the plane, so we called a
MayDay and headed for the Beach.
When I got back to the Boat, we did a fly-by to determine whether we'd be allowed to come aboard or have to go swimming. So, with the Helo standing by, we came on Final and fortunately trapped a 3 wire on our 1st pass. When I got out, I went to the rear of the aircraft and 3 feet of the Tail surface was gone - I don't know why we were still an airplane!
We did our debrief, got a meal, and went to our cabin. It was then, 45 min. later, that I started shaking uncontrollably - it had finally sunk in. But, the next day, they had a fresh aircraft for us and we just went ahead and flew our flight assignment - at 23, you're immortal...
Happy Motoring!... Jim'99
Hybrid Mode
